Christmas Wreaths

This weekend my friend, Kara, had a wreath-making party! It was a great idea and I hope it becomes a holiday tradition. A group of ladies gathered in her dining room over mimosas and coffee, armed with glue guns, burlap, and felt and got crafty.

We started with blank wreath forms. Some people covered theirs with fabric, flowers, you name it - we used it. I covered mine with strips of green and red felt and then attached a few holiday bells. Simple and, hopefully, classy.

I love they way my wreath turned out. It brings a bright spot of Christmas cheer to our front door.

Christmas-time is here!

I love decorating for Christmas. I love the tradition - unpacking my favorite ornaments from my childhood and re-telling the same stories about the time that Aunt Annie gave me a certain ornament or my friend Betsy made me another. This year, we're going a bit non-traditional in our house which is normally not my style, but with a tight budget and two dogs (one of whom is a bit rambunctious), neither a real tree nor an artificial one were in the cards for us.

We were thinking of picking up a rosemary plant/tree from WholeFoods to decorate/cook with during the holiday season, but since we already have rosemary planted in the garden it seemed like it might be a bit of a waste. They smell lovely but are only about 12" high and wouldn't hold many decorations in the end. I was a bit discouraged and thinking we'd have to be tree-less when I came across this brilliant idea on (you guessed it!) pinterest.com: Make your own Christmas tree out of a tomato cage!

So, $4 and a trip to Home Depot later, we have our own DIY Christmas Tree! We ran our lights vertically on the cage and that seemed to make it more tree shaped. All in all, a super simple project that helped make our living room full of Christmas cheer.

Day 10: Something I made

A while ago I put my pinterest.com habit into practice and made a pretty awesome chalkboard for our kitchen. We're crossing our fingers that someone gets us the masonry bits off of our Home Depot registry so that we can hang it up!

Day 4: Favorite Color

My favorite color is teal. Also green. When we started planning our wedding last spring it was really hard to choose between the two. But teal won out. So, today's photo is both my favorite color and a wedding sneak peak.

Last weekend while Justin was away on his bachelor party I went to town with my brand new glue gun(!!!) and finished up some of our wedding accents - all of them are full of that beautiful teal blue color that I love.

A Woman's Touch

Slowly but surely I'm making my mark on my future home. Justin has a great taste on his own, but it's been so much fun to dream about how we can make our home welcoming and comfortable and start to add my own touches.

A while back we moved the couch from my apartment over to Justin's for more seating, but it was super cramped with both of our sofas - that didn't really fit - in the living room. A couple weeks ago, on a secret trip to Costco, Justin found the perfect solution.  The new "love seat" is really two separate chairs that sit together to make a love seat. It is perfect for the space constraints of the living room and goes so well with the sofa with one of the sofas we already have.

Now comes the fun part - throw pillows! I found the most beautiful fabrics at Hawthorne Threads and the just arrived this week. I can't wait to get sewing!

It's about to get crafty.

Fifty seven days to go. Let's get this party started.

My first wedding project (other than stamping and mailing 200 invitations - yipes!):

Flip-Flop basket for the dance floor.

DIY Kitchen Chalkboard

I've been dreaming of a chalkboard for the kitchen for a while now and this past weekend the project finally came together.

My step-dad found me this super cool old frame and cut a nice smooth piece of pine to fit.

I transformed both with the help of a small container of chalkboard paint and a bottle of cheap-o white spray paint that I picked up at my local Home Depot.

Use a roller to get a nice smooth finish on the chalkboard paint. The entire painting process took less than 45 minutes from start to finish. The hard part was leaving it alone until the paint was dry.

And, voilà, kitchen chalkboard! Now, comes the hard part.....hanging it up on a plaster wall.....

April's almost over?

This month has flown by. And, in case you're counting, there are only 181 days left until our wedding. We've been busy around the house getting the garden ready for the summer and planning for the fall. Coscto has seen us often and we've made good use of the Volvo.

Planting blueberry bushes,

And building rose beds,

And potting Ranunculus,

And putting in new flooring in the kitchen and basement,

And keeping an eye on these trouble makers.

We could all use a nap.

The house is really coming along. I simply cannot wait to live there.

Chalkboards & Spices

I'm brainstorming about fun things to do to add a little character to the kitchen. I like the idea of a DIY project and I've recently stumbled upon some awesome ideas for chalkboard paint.

I love this.

I adore this.

There's a small space above the butcher block and below the pot rack in the kitchen that is just begging to be snazzed up.  Did you know that they make magnetic chalkboard paint?!?!!? We've registered for these cool magnetic spice jars and I'm thinking something awesome is in the works!

St. Nicholas Day

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

I love traditions. Sadly over the years, many of the traditions of my childhood have come and gone. We don't pretend that Santa sneaks in with presents while we are gone at Midnight Mass. We don't cram the entire Mueller family into a three room (that's room, not bedroom) house and eat Grandma's burnt turkey and cauliflower with cheese sauce. I was ok with seeing that one go, but I'm glad to say that St. Nicholas Day lives on.

Every year we'd put out our shoes and, every December 6th, we'd wake up to shoes stuffed with Minty Bells and a new ornament. St. Nick, as he was known in our house, didn't leave anything extravagant, but those Minty Bells were the best, and I loved hearing the story of the true Santa Claus. Even after I was mostly a grown-up, out of college and on my own, my mom would find a way into my apartment and stuff my shoes full of yummy surprises or mail off a little box marked "DO NOT OPEN until St. Nicholas Day."

This year, I wanted to share the St. Nicholas tradition with my fella. And, since I don't have easy access to his regular shoes, I went back to my roots and crafted it up. I found this easy tutorial for paper shoes on doodlesandnoodles and set to work. I think it's a win.